public sector innovation

Big Data has had a big impact on the competitive landscape. Businesses that have embraced this explosive technology of digital media are better positioned to market faster with products and services that satisfy customers’ needs adequately. Wise management of time is very critical in staying ahead of the competition. Utilizing Big Data solutions in processing digital data is one way of enabling managers or organizations and business owners to make quick, informed decisions that streamline efficient business operations. Here is an analysis of some of the real management applications of Big Data:

The election of 2016 will certainly be one for the history books. Regardless of your political leanings, there was one sure thing to celebrate during this election cycle. The Innovate Your State Fix California Challenge—a crowdsourcing campaign aimed at promoting public participation in order to determine ways to improve government—had an initiative on the ballot in California!

For many years, companies were convinced of the competitive advantage of closed research and development. They jealously protected their intellectual property behind closed doors and dramatically revealed it to the public after years of development. This old model has since been replaced by open innovation.

Are private companies more innovative than public companies? What happens to an innovative start-up which goes public? Will the same team of people who were so agile and entrepreneurial in the start-up become even more innovative once they have some capital and recognition behind them? Apparently not.

Governments could be described as the largest and longest running crowd-funding schemes in existence. Sadly, whereas crowd-funding is seen as innovative, flexible, responsive, bottom up, transparent, enabling – among other things; governments would be hard pushed to receive similar accolades. However, times are changing and governments are beginning to adopt some of the characteristics of crowd-funding and crowdsourcing. But there is a long way to go.

Dustin Haisler is the former assistant City Manager (and cio) of Manor, Texas where he introduced Web 2.0 and placed quick response tags citywide to increase efficiency and cut costs. He recently joined Spigit to consult with cities nationwide on similar initiatives. Dustin encourages all cities to find creative ways to engage its citizens.

Creating new solutions with people, not for them, can help drive radical innovation in the public sector. By focusing on citizens’ own experiences and resources, co-creation can help identify truly valuable services. Public managers should embrace co-creation to deliver better services and outcomes at less cost.

Here is an interesting example of how you can use crowdscourcing to drive public sector innovation. This particular video is promoting the Brightidea Software, however there are a number of open innovation software tools currently available in the market.

Most Western European countries are struggling with fundamental, long term issues, e.g. an ageing workforce; downward pressure on public sector budgets and increasing demands from citizens, to which Danish learning could be applied.